SÉRIE ANTROPOLOGIA

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SUPERIMPOSED COSMOGRAPHIES ONREGIONAL AMAZONIAN FRONTIERS.

Paul E. Little

Brasília1997

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SUPERIMPOSED COSMOGRAPHIES ONREGIONAL AMAZONIAN FRONTIERS

Paul E. Little

INTRODUCTION

Territorial disputes over Amazonia are an integral part of the history of this vasttropical forest biome, and continue to be waged today. Perhaps the most enduring, andbrutal, of these disputes has been the centuries-long conquests by European powers seekingto dispossess indigenous nations of their historically occupied territories. These conquestswere accompanied by efforts of European colonial powers, notably Spain and Portugal, toclaim this area as part of their monarchic domains. By the nineteenth century, thesedisputes had turned into diplomatic and military disputes between the newly emergedSouth American nation-states to incorporate parts of Amazonia into their respectivenational territories. By the twentieth century, most of the territorial disputes in this biomeoccurred within the boundaries of nation-states where social and ethnic groups withradically differing ideologies —most recently, developmentalism and environmentalism—were pitted against each other.

As a political space, while Amazonia may appear to be clearly divided into nation-states, each with its own color and firmly drawn boundaries (Malkki 1992), each of thesecolors hides the hotly disputed territories of social groups. A similar situation exists withreference to Amazonia as an economic space, since it is not neatly partitioned off intoneatly delimited parcels of private lands, but has large chunks of “public” as well as“social” territories interspersed with numerous tracts of “private” and “squatted” lands,most of which have highly diffuse boundaries. This paper offers a highly synthetic historical, ethnographic, and comparativeanalysis of these territorial disputes in two sub-national micro-regions (hereafter, simply‘regions’) located along the equator at extreme ends of the Amazon basin: the Aguaricoregion in Ecuador and the Jari region in Brazil.1 This analysis not only seeks to delve intothe particularities of these disputes, but attempts to construct both broader and deeperinsights about the spatial constitution of Amazonia and about the process of humanterritoriality in general. The historical focus provides the temporal depth necessary to viewhuman territorialization as an on-going, highly contested process. The ethnographicperspective attempts to understand this complex historical process from the perspective ofthe multiple social groups that are struggling over their territories by describing not onlytheir specific collective claims to the areas the physically occupy, but also the politicalmeans they use to assert and defend these claims. Finally, the comparative perspective

1 A more extensive and thorough treatment of these two regions can be found in Little 1996.

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allows for the detection of key diachronic and structural parallels that can tell us moreabout the specificity of Amazonian territoriality.

Both the Aguarico and Jari regions have long experienced historical andcontemporary frontier scenarios and as such offer privileged sites from which to view thecomplexity of the process of establishing territories in areas already occupied by othergroups. The common definition of a frontier as a sparsely populated geographic area whichis peripheral to political and economic centers of power and that experiences acceleratedrates of demographic, agricultural, or technological change offers a starting point for thisanalysis, but remains inadequate for the purposes of this paper. The notion of the frontierbeing developed here also emphasizes its dimension as a contested space, one in which therules of social interaction are not clearly established and where different social groupscontend for the political hegemony of their distinct claims (Becker 1988).

In Amazonia, the frontier process did not take the form of a “tidal wave” marked bymassive immigration flows during a single epoch (Kopytoff 1987), but rather has been acontinual process spread out over numerous regionally distinct sites and has been occurringsince pre-Colombian times with the regular expansion and contraction of indigenousgroups The creation of new frontiers in Amazonia greatly accelerated with the long seriesof European conquests beginning in 1500. Given the vast expanse of Amazonia, the highdegree of social and biological diversity it contains, and the difficulty of access among itsdistant parts, most of the frontier scenarios have been regionally based. As such, inAmazonia regional frontiers have been opened and closed, only to be reopened andreclosed again and again with the emergence of ever-new resources sought by newlyarriving social groups. This leads me to refer to the frontier history of Amazonia as one ofperennial frontiers.

Before entering directly into the analysis of the two regions under study here,several conceptual guides need to be presented. The concept of cosmography will be usedhere to analyze the process of establishing human territories. In 1887, Franz Boas (1940:646) made a call for the founding of a science of cosmography which would encompass thestudy of the “mutual influence of the earth and its inhabitants upon each other.” Byreviving and adapting this concept, and giving it specific cultural content, geographicalreferents, and a historical time frame, it can serve as a guide for the analysis of territorialdisputes on Amazonian frontiers. Cosmography will be defined here as collective,historically-contingent identities, ideologies, and environmental knowledge systemsdeveloped by a social group to establish and maintain human territories.

Cosmography can be understood as a conjuncture between cosmology andgeography whereby cultural visions of the world (cosmos) are inscribed (graphy) intogeographical areas. The concept of cosmography is different from that of the more generalnotion of ‘worldview’ since it is invariably linked to specific geographical locations withunique biophysical characteristics. By linking cosmographies to social groups, historicaland ethnographic analysis is facilitated. Each cosmography is capable of spawningdifferent types of human territories that are uniquely tailored to the biophysicalcharacteristics of the areas where they have been installed. Thus cosmography, as it will beused here, is a broader concept that that of territory, though the two concepts are directlylinked since a social group’s territory is invariably founded upon a distinct set ofcosmographical principles.

Cosmographies, and the human territories they engender, are superimposed upon

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each other in time, space, and power. The notion of superimposition carries with it bothtemporal and spatial connotations. When a photographic image is superimposed uponanother, for example, this superimposition is made in a temporal moment that succeeds theimpression of the first image and is achieved through the spatial overlap of one image uponanother within the same physical space. By analogy, cosmographies exhibit successiveoverlaps since one comes after another in historical time. This successive character,however, does not imply an improvement upon the previous one, only that a differentsocial group has arrived afterwards and is promoting the installation of a new territory.Hence, cosmographies succeed but do not necessarily supersede each other in time.Geographically, a horizontal overlapping occurs in which one group’s spatiality is placedover part or all the spatiality of another group without necessarily extinguishing it.Cosmographies overlap but do not necessarily supplant each other in space, since variouscosmographies can exist simultaneously even though they lay claim to the samegeographical space.

The superimposition of cosmographies creates a complex power dynamic which isinvariably asymmetrical. New cosmographies emerge during particular historical epochsand are generally backed by powerful forces that seek to impose their hegemony overpreceeding cosmographies. This invariably produces situations of conflict that mayprovoke —if the power inequality between these forces is sufficently great— the extinctionof entire societies and their territorialities. But the process of superimposition is not limitedto situations of conflict and conquest. Invariably, simultaneous situations of incorporation,interpenetration, and accommodation emerge that provoke the continual transformation ofcosmographies and territorial claims, resulting in multiple forms of overlappingterritorialties.

Since many social actors, each with their own sources of power, are involved in thefrontier, there is no formula for determining just how this dynamic will unfold historically.Ethnographic analysis offers a means of deciphering this situation since it places all thedisputes within their respective geographical, historical, political, and cultural contexts. Italso places the competing claims to territory made by social groups at the center ofanalysis. These claims represent the translation of cosmographical principles and historicalpresence into specific political forms of struggle. For these reasons, human territoriality canbe best understood as a highly contested, continual process of occupation, affirmation, anddefense.

The territorial dimension of regional Amazonian frontiers can now bereconceptualized by taking into account the presence of superimposed cosmographiesthroughout history. Particular attention will be given to three types of cosmographies —indigenous, development, and environmental— though mission, mercantile, and nationalones will also enter the analysis. By holding geographical space relatively constant —in.this case the Aguarico and Jari regions— this paper will analyze the historical humanflows into and out of these regions in order to detect the territorial dynamic that these flowshave generated.

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INDIGENOUS COSMOGRAPHIES

In presenting the principal dimensions of pre-Colombian indigenouscosmographies, one must take into account the fact that native Amazonian peoples were(and are) incredibly diverse in their cultural expressions, ecological adaptations, and theirterritorial occupations of the jungle. The use of rivers, and the watersheds within whichthey are located, provides a starting point for understanding the various indigenouscosmographies that have operated, and continue to operate, in Amazonia. Within theframework of these river systems, indigenous territorialities are often proscribed by kinshipand descent systems (Weiss 1969; Descola 1994). Furthermore, an indigenous groups’territory “is related to a cultural history. This history, often placed within a mythic-religiouslanguage, orients and defines the spatial movements of settlements from their currentlocation to a new one” (Ramos 1986: 19). The practice of collective access to the landcoupled with specific cosmologies form the foundation of indigenous cosmographies inAmazonia.

The perennial frontiers mentioned above have brought about centuries of regionalconquests in which multiple and often contradictory cosmographies were superimposedupon each other in a process that radically altered indigenous cosmographies withoutnecessarily eliminating them, though of course many indigenous groups, along with theirrespective cosmographies, were brought to extinction. One important result of theethnocide that these conquests produced was a subsequent process of ethnogenesis of newsocial groups —some speaking indigenous languages while others adopted the languagesof conquest (Portuguese or Spanish)— that were culturally and ecologically distinct fromthe societies of the conquerors.

I have chosen to group these newly emergent societies together with the thosesurviving indigenous societies under the broad term of autochthonous societies. The termautochthonous has historical, ecological, and territorial dimensions. From an historicalperspective, to be Amazonian autochthonous is to be of the Amazon: to have been bornthere; to have ancestors that are of the region; to have origin myths located in the region; toidentify with this biome as ones’ home. From an ecological perspective, the forms ofbiophysical adaptation of autochthonous peoples are based upon intimate knowledge ofAmazonian ecosystems and are finely honed to its natural cycles, providing them withlong-term sustainability. From a territorial perspective, autochthonous peoples havedeveloped collective forms of access to and use of geographical space, a modality whichplaces their territorial claims outside of the market realm of private property. Thisdefinition of autochthonous does not seek to eliminate internal distinctions betweenindigenous, cholada, riberinho, quilombola, and caboclo peoples, but rather serves todistinguish these peoples as a general grouping from recent arrivals such as colonists, oilworkers, gold miners, and environmentalists who are entering onto and creating newregional Amazonian frontiers. At the same time, this definition does not ignore thecenturies of extra-Amazonian influences which have molded contemporary Amazonianautochthonous societies, and leaves open the possibility of new mixtures in the futureoccurring on Amazonian soil between the current autochthonous groups and the recentarrivals.

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Autochthonous homelands: The Aguarico region

The Aguarico region of the Upper Amazon Basin is nestled along the escarpmentof the Andes mountains at their junction with the lowlands of the Amazon jungle. TheAguarico River Basin forms the heart of this region and is situated between the largerPutumayo and Napo River Basins. The Aguarico River has its source high in the Andesmountain range, descends rapidly along its eastern slope, and then flows through theAmazonian lowlands before emptying into the Napo River, a major tributary of theAmazon River.

Archeological excavations in the Napo River Basin reveal a series of intermittentoccupations by a variety of groups, apparently of different origins over the past twomillennium (Meggers 1967). Despite differing archeological reconstructions of thepeopling of this region (Lathrap 1970; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1973), most studies postulate theexistence of numerous small, semi-nomadic groups occupying the tropical forest uplands,who were sandwiched between, and influenced by, larger river-based societies. Theintergroup relations in the Upper Amazon Basin were multiple and based upon a complexmix of conflict and cooperation. From a territorial viewpoint, the Upper Amazon was thehome of relatively autarkic indigenous societies.

Shortly after the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire and the various Andeanhighland indigenous groups that comprised it, the Spaniards turned their sights to theAmazonian lowlands as part of their incessant search for gold. The major entry point forSpaniards into the Upper Amazon Basin was from Quito in the northern Andes. Bytraveling due east from Quito, passing over the eastern range of the Andes and descendinginto the jungle, one gains direct access to the Napo River Basin. It was from this route thatFrancisco de Orellana entered Amazonia and eventually sailed down the Napo River to itsmouth at the Amazon River and, from there, the remaining length of the Amazon River,arriving at its mouth at the Atlantic Ocean in 1542. Over the succeeding decades severalattempts to establish settler towns and gold mining centers in the Napo River Valley weremade, but these met fierce indigenous resistance and a hostile natural environment and didnot prosper.

One of first incursions by Europeans directly into the Aguarico region was made byJesuit missionaries whose presence dates from 1595 and lasted until their expulsion fromSpanish America in 1767. The two major indigenous groups of the Aguarico region at thetime of the Jesuit arrival were the Cofanes, located along the upper Aguarico River near thefoothills of the Andean range, and the Encabellados, who were situated along the middleand lower Aguarico River. With European contact, and the diseases it brought, these twogroups began a four-century-long process of demographic decline that would only subsidein the mid-twentieth century when these two groups numbered only a few hundred each.

Along with their evangelizing project, the Jesuits brought with them a keyterritorial strategy, in what I call a mission cosmography, founded upon the relocation ofindigenous groups into large, sedentary mission towns (reducciones) located along themajor rivers of the region, where the natives were to be evangelized, learn agriculture, giveup their ‘savage’ customs, and in general, become ‘civilized’ within the European mold ofthe time (Golob 1982). The Jesuit program of establishing sedentary villages based uponagriculture represented a major shift in the settlement patterns of the native Amazoniangroups of the area who lived from a vital mix of mobile hunting, fishing and foraging and

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temporary sedentarianism for the planting of their gardens. Another crucial impact of themission towns was the forced grouping of different indigenous societies, a situation thatprovoked a breakdown of internal indigenous social organization, usually based either onkinship ties or ties to a shaman-headman, as well as of the geographical use-area of each ofthe indigenous groups. The mixing of many indigenous groups in the mission villages andtheir adoption of the Quichua lingua franca used by the missionaries, coupled with massiverates of depopulation, set in motion a process of ethnogenesis which over the comingcenturies would turn the emergent Quichua speaking peoples into the most numerous groupin the region (Whitten 1976).

In 1830, the state of Ecuador was formed from the dismantling of Gran Colombia,and laid formal claim to the Aguarico region as part of its national territory, ostensiblyplacing it within the domain of a national cosmography founded upon the ideal ofexclusive, sovereign control over all the lands within its realm. Ecuadorian leaders,however, were little interested in this inhospitable jungle region and it languished in neglectthroughout the nineteenth century, witnessing only a few half-hearted (and failed) attemptsat colonizing the area (Muratorio 1991). It was only in 1920, ninety years after thefounding of the Republic, when the Amazonian provinces of Napo-Pastaza and Santiago-Zamora were created, that Amazonia finally began to be integrated into the political-administrative structure of the Ecuadorian state. And it was in 1937 that the first road intothe region was completed, connecting Ambato with Puyo, and this was constructed by theShell Oil Company as part of its petroleum exploration work in the jungle.

While the Ecuadorian State demonstrated a general lack of interest in its Amazonia,the forces of the world market were operating throughout the region, installing what can becalled mercantile cosmographies tied to the geographical distribution of natural resourcesand their collection, extraction, transportation and subsequent sale by specific socialgroups. The demand for forest products from the Upper Amazon increased dramaticallyduring the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and included such products as gold, pita,vanilla, wild cocoa, resins, quinine, tagua, and sarsaparilla. Yet it was the rubber boom,which gained strength in the Upper Amazon Basin starting in the 1880s and continued untilits dramatic demise in 1913, that would produce profound transformations among theindigenous peoples living in the Aguarico and Napo River Valleys. The source of greatestimpact was the incessant need for Indian labor to find, collect and harvest rubber for thepowerful rubber traders (caucheros) and brutal methods, including slavery and wantonkilling, were used to secure this labor force (Taussig 1987).

The rubber boom also produced a rapid expansion of Peruvian interests into largeparts of Amazonia formally claimed by Ecuador. The fact that all the rubber was exporteddownriver through the Peruvian-controlled port of Iquitos and that almost all consumergoods were imported via these same fluvial routes consolidated Peruvian presence in theregion and helped incorporate it into the Peruvian economy. This situation was aggravatedby the difficult access to the Amazon from the Ecuadorian highlands due to the lack ofbasic infrastructure. The territorial gains that Peru would make in the 1941 war coincidedalmost exactly with the area under their regular control gained during the rubber boom.

Petroleum was another resource that was being sought after in this region.Explorations in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s did not find oil at this time and with thepullout of the oil companies at the end of the 1940s, a despondent Ecuadorian PresidentGalo Plaza affirmed that “Amazonia is a myth.” It is important to note that the 1941-2 war

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between Ecuador and Peru was fueled by the oil interests of two competing firms —RoyalDutch Shell in Ecuador and Standard Oil in Peru— with Peru’s military victory givingStandard Oil control over a large concession previously claimed by Ecuador. As we shallsee shortly, petroleum later became a major force for territorial change in the Aguaricoregion.

Circa 1950, the Aguarico River Basin was occupied and used by four indigenouspopulations —the Siona-Secoya and the Tetete (both descendants of the Encabellados), theCofán, and the Quichua— located in several scattered communities. The territorialoccupation of this region by these indigenous groups —the “survivors” of the multipleforces briefly mentioned above (Vickers 1983)— was loosely defined since their relativelysmall demographic presence did not create enormous resource pressures, nor did it provokedirect territorial conflicts amongst them. This region also was home to a smattering ofEcuadorian ranchers, Catholic and Evangelical missionaries, Amazonian river traders, andEcuadorian and Peruvian soldiers. There was a notable absence of Ecuadorian governmentofficials, since they mainly operated out of Tena, the provincial capital, well to the south ofthe Aguarico region.

Autochthonous homelands: The Jari region

The Jari region is located in the Lower Amazon Basin and comprises the left bankof the North Canal of the Amazon River, where it encompasses the lower portions of theParu, Jari, Cajari, and Maracá Rivers. This region gets its name from the Jari River, whichflows through the heart of the region and is an important fluvial crossroads at theintersection of the Amazon Delta and the Lower Amazon River. Its headwaters are formedalong the southern slopes of the low ranging Tumucumaque mountains which separateBrazil from Surinam and French Guiana.

Archeological evidence reveals a long history of occupation by a series of differentgroups whose original entry point is hotly debated (see Prous 1991). What is emergingfrom the archeological record is that by the second millennium A.D., the Amazon Deltawas controlled by relatively large, sedentary populations who maintained extensive tradenetworks with indigenous groups in other parts of Amazonia (Roosevelt 1991; Whitehead1993). Many smaller, mobile groups occupied forested uplands located on the fringe of theareas controlled by the chiefdoms of the Amazon floodplain.

The first European incursions into the Lower Amazon Basin occurred in 1500 andproduced the first case of the seizing of indigenous peoples by European explorers(Hemming 1978). At this time, the Jari region was home to the Tucujú peoples, an Arawak-speaking society and one of the most populous indigenous groups along the left bank of theNorth Canal of the Amazon River. The Tucujús maintained peaceful relations with theirAruã and Nheengaíba neighbors who inhabited the delta island region. These groups wouldbe left relatively undisturbed by the Europeans for most of the sixteenth century. Thearrival of Dutch, English, and Irish traders and settlers into the area beginning in 1590 waspredicated upon friendly trading relations with the local indigenous groups. These tradingalliances quickly turned into military ones as the Portuguese initiated a series of wars in thearea starting in 1620 designed to expel the other European powers from the region. The

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Tucujús suffered heavily from these wars since their alliances with the English, Irish, andDutch made them the target of brutal Portuguese attacks and provoked their flight inland,whereby they abandoned their fertile riverside and island homelands.

These conquests were followed by the arrival of first the Franciscans and then theJesuits, who began the difficult process of installing mission cosmographies that so alteredthe territorial landscape of the indigenous inhabitants. The Indian manpower for the Jesuitsystem came from the practice of descimentos (literally “descents”) whereby Indians wereenticed with gifts or forced to move into Jesuit villages (aldeias) located along the AmazonRiver and its main tributaries (hence the need for the Indians to “descend” to them). Thesevillages were highly structured political entities in which rigid work schedules wereestablished for these so-called “free Indians” (Leite 1938). However, since the “priests hada monopoly over all operations of production, transport and sale of commercial goods”(Moreira Neto 1988: 24), the work of the Indians helped enrich the Company of Jesus andturn it into the wealthiest group in all of the Amazon.

In the Jari region, as opposed to the Aguarico region, the missions had competitionfrom a growing number of Portuguese settlers who had entered the area and participated inthe Indian slave trade. Both the Jesuit and settler systems, however, established sedentarysettlements in riverside areas which were tied to the commercial demands of distantmarkets and, in fact, often made their settlements close to each other where they formed asymbiotic relationship. Neither system respected the specific ethnic heritage nor theparticular lifeways of indigenous peoples. Together, these two systems provoked thebreakdown of internal social structures that were the principal means through whichindigenous societies reproduced themselves as a people. This dual process of exploitationled to the extinction of the Tucujús people by the beginning of the nineteenth century(Gallois 1981).

The new associations and interactions among the Indians that had been ‘descended”and the Europeans were conducted in the língua geral (literally, general language), anindigenous creole tongue derived from the Tupi language family, one of the principallinguistic stocks of the entire Brazilian portion of South America. The Jesuits played a keyrole in the establishment of the língua geral as the lingua franca of the Middle and LowerAmazon Basins since their missionary work with the Indians was conducted in thislanguage. The use of a single indigenous-based language greatly facilitated the mixing ofdisparate ethnic groups within the mission villages and also served as the language ofcommerce along the river. The depopulation process resulting from the Indian slave tradeand introduced diseases gave rise to an ethnogenesis process. In the Lower Amazon Basinthis process can be divided into two stages: the emergence of the tapuio population, a groupof ethnically-mixed, full-blooded Indians who spoke the lingua geral, and the subsequentdemise of this population and its restructuring into a mixed-blood, Portuguese speakingcaboclo population (Galvão 1976; Parker 1985). It is this population that came to dominatethe Jari region.

The existence of local Portuguese speaking population assisted in the installation ofa Brazilian national cosmography that emerged after Brazil independence from thePortuguese crown in 1822. The Cabanagem revolt of 1835-1840 represents a key event inthis consolidation process. Though this revolt began as a dispute between two competingfactions within the city of Belém’s elite leadership, it rapidly spread up the Lower andMiddle Amazon valley and took on racial, cultural and economic undertones whereby poor

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tapuios and mixed-blooded settlers (the lines between these two groups were beginning toblur) rose up against the Portuguese and Brazilian elite that was dominating them andwaged a bloody campaign of revenge in which thousands of people were killed on all sides(Cruz 1960; Di Paolo 1990). The Brazilian imperial army was brought in and eventuallyquelled the uprising. With the crushing of the Cabanagem rebellion, the Brazilian State haddemonstrated that it was the principal administrative authority over Brazilian Amazoniaand began to implement a series of policies designed to integrate these lands into itspolitical, legal, and administrative structures, and in the process consolidated a Brazilianterritorial entity into which the caboclo population was incorporated. The formation of thestate of Amazonas from the western portion of state of Pará in 1850, with Manaus as itscapital, was a major step in that direction.

All throughout this time, various mercantile cosmographies —based in productssuch as wild clove and cocoa— were operating that brought new social groups in theLower Amazon Basin. The rubber boom, however, was by far the most important of theseand brought about major territorial changes. While rubber was produced from a variety oftrees located throughout the tropics worldwide, none of these produced as high a quality ofrubber as the Hevea brasiliensis (known in Brazil as the seringueira), the rubber tree foundexclusively in the Amazon Basin and, within this biome, almost entirely within theterritorial limits of Brazil. During the first four decades of the nineteenth century, rubberwas collected in the immediate area of Belém and the Amazon delta islands by local tapuioand caboclo populations.

The initial system rapidly gave way to the aviamento system founded upon thesupplying of trade goods on credit within a nested hierarchy of commercial relationsextending from the exporter, at the upper end, through various levels of aviadores(creditors or ‘forwarders’) all the way down to the seringueiros (rubber tappers). Thoseaviadores who were able to control large tracts of land used for rubber collecting turnedinto extremely wealthy rubber barons and the tracts of land they controlled were calledseringais (rubber tree stands). The creation of extensive seringais established a newterritorial modality in Brazilian Amazonia (Santos 1980). The rubber boom came to anabrupt halt between 1911 and 1914 as plantation-grown rubber from Asia, grown fromHevea brasiliensis stocks stolen from Brazil in 1876, entered the world market in massivequantities and greatly undercut the price of Amazonian rubber.

Meanwhile, other extractive products arose to partially fill the gap left by thecollapse of rubber such as Brazil nuts, copaíba oil and an assortment of resins. In the heartof the Jari region, a Brazilian named José Júlio de Andrade began, in 1899, buying up largetracts of land. He rapidly established himself as the most important aviador in the regionand began to build an immense Brazil nut estate. This estate included the lower basins ofthe Paru, Jari, Iratapurú, and Cajari Rivers and covered an area of approximately 3,000,000hectares, making him one of the largest of extractive latifundiários (estate bosses) in theentire Amazon River Basin (Lins 1991: 35-43).

The estate of José Julio had a structure similar to the seringais of the rubber baronswith the important distinction being that he ruled supreme over castanhais (Brazil nutgroves). His reliance on Brazil nuts rather than rubber as his principal extractive product,would spare him economic demise from the rubber boom collapse. José Júlio supplementedthis extractive trade with the export of rubber, oils, and resins and raised thousands of headof cattle and water buffalo. After a half-century reign as undisputed ruler of this region

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(1899-1948), José Júlio finally sold his company to a Portuguese firm in 1948.José Júlio had thousands of locally-based caboclos working for him who were

controlled by capatazes (local bosses) under his direct command. While some of theseworkers migrated each year to the Brazil nut groves from the delta islands, many of thembegan settling permanently along the rivers of the region. Here they developed aneconomic and adaptive system centered around the territorial unit of the colocação, afamily-run productive unit on a small tract of land (20-100 hectares) which includes thecaboclo family’s house, manioc garden, fruit orchard, horticultural plantings, and casa defarinha (shed where manioc flour is made). The effective use area of the caboclo family ismuch larger than the colocação since it includes areas of hunting and fishing which areinformally shared by the other caboclos living in the region. By establishing theircolocações in the midst of José Júlio’s Brazil nut empire, these caboclos created their ownterritorial presence and began turning this area into their new homeland.

Circa 1950, there were three principal territorial actors in the Jari region: (1) thePortuguese firm which bought José Júlio’s Brazil nut estate and who claimed the entirearea for themselves; (2) small-scale patrões who had established control over local caboclogroups and who laid claim to castanhais and ranches; and (3) the family claims of thecaboclos who inhabited the area. These three territorialities were all spatially superimposedupon each other. The indigenous population had been effectively removed from the area,though the Waiãpi had a significant presence just to the north of the Jari region in centralAmapá and a small community of Aparai was situated along the middle Jari River, also tothe north of the region.

DEVELOPMENT COSMOGRAPHIES

By the 1950’s, a new development ideology was emerging throughout LatinAmerica centered around five key elements: import-substitution; rapid industrialization;nation-building; agrarian reform; and national security doctrines. During the sixties, Braziland Ecuador, along with other Amazonian nation-states, opened the floodgates into theirrespective Amazonian lands and ‘development’ poured into them in such intense ways thatthe existing indigenous and caboclo territories would be radically altered. Regionalfrontiers that had been opened and closed in the past, would be reopened with the arrival ofnew social actors who installed development cosmographies, introduced new technologiesand markets into Amazonia, and created new types of territories.

In Brazil, the State-run Superintendency for the Development of the Amazon(SUDAM), created in 1966, financed the installation of immense cattle ranches, whileduring the seventies two National Integration Plans (PIN I and PIN II) opened up majornew roads in the jungle and promoted its massive colonization. By the eighties, the State’sdevelopment interests had shifted to mining with the implementation of the Grande CarajásMining Complex in Pará and the North Corridor (Calha Norte) national security program.In Ecuador, Amazonian development programs of the seventies promoted the dual strategyof oil development and agricultural colonization. By the eighties, this expansive driveincluded the installation of several large African palm plantations and a major wave ofindustrial logging.

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The ideology of conquest, translated now into the notion of “taming the jungle,”would be principally implemented through the twin pillars of large-scale developmentprojects and massive waves of colonization. The former represented a form of ‘internalcolonialism’ while the latter unleashed waves of ‘internal colonization.’ Both would occurwithin the hegemonic nationalist framework of the nation-state, though this was directlyinfluenced by and dependent upon global forces. Each method harbors specific territorialdimensions which stem from the differential application by different social actors ofdevelopment cosmographies. Two types of territories will be analyzed here —enclaveterritories and migrant territories— each representing a particular territorial variant of thedevelopment cosmographies just described. Enclave territories formed around installationof the petroleum industry in the Aguarico region in Ecuador and a massive tree plantationand wood pulp factory in the Jari region in Brazil. Both projects began in the late 1960s andby the 1970s had become the hegemonic territorial presence in their respective regions. Abrief presentation of these enclave territories will be followed by a description of therelated migrant territories —one rural, the other urban— simultaneously installed. Theseterritories were superimposed upon existing indigenous and caboclo homelands.

Enclave territories 1: Petroleum development in the Aguarico region

Enclaves, whether political, ethnic, or economic, are characterized by two keyelements. First, they require either a large or strategic geographical base of operations.Foreign subsidiaries of large firms would only enter into this category if they depend uponexclusive control of extensive areas of land within another country or geographical region(e.g. mines, plantations, ports). Second, these enclaves must have direct ties to groups orinstitutions located outside the host country or geographical region. Thus while enclavesare insulated from their direct territorial neighbors, they are linked to larger entities beyondthese neighbors. By cutting across different geographic regions and articulating themwithin a particular structure, enclaves can simultaneously function at local, regional,national, and international levels.

Large-scale development projects, which continue a long history of extraction inAmazonia geared to meet the demands of ever-changing international markets, are modernexamples of economic enclaves. The extractive nature of these enclaves is a key factor intheir specific location within Amazonia. The territorial dimension enters not only throughthe specific geographic dispersal of resources but also in the way these locations represent“islands of syntropy” (Altvater 1993), i.e. sites of concentrated energetic order. Prosperingwithin the world economic system structured by the ever-changing demands of the worldmarket is achieved through the import of syntropy and the export of entropy (see alsoBunker 1985). The implementation of petroleum development in the Aguarico regionexemplifies this process.

Petroleum first entered the Amazonian scene with oil explorations beginning in1921. After decades of unsuccessful searches, oil was finally struck on March 29, 1967, inwhat was then the Napo Province, and the oil age finally arrived to Ecuadorian Amazoniaafter much anguish and wishful thinking. During the succeeding five years, theconstruction of the 500-kilometer trans-Ecuadorian oil pipeline —stretching from the

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Amazonian lowlands, up and over two Andean mountain ranges, before descending to thePacific Coast port of Esmeraldas— culminated in Ecuador’s first oil exports in August of1972 (Vega 1980: 91-2).

The coming of the oil industry to Ecuadorian Amazonia reopened the Aguaricoregional frontier through the arrival of social actors who constructed new territories there.The petroleum industry united under one activity the actions of geologists who do theseismic explorations, engineers who drill the wells, pipe fitters who construct the pipelines,road crews who build roads, workers who pump the oil, truckers who transport materials,accountants who keep the books, managers who run the operation, and a host of supportpersonnel. Another key social actor in the region were the armed forces installed in thisnewly christened national security zone to defend the nation’s oil.

These social actors formed a petroleum enclave that was tied to the outside worldvia oil and gas pipelines, roads, airports, satellite dishes, and telephone lines, while it hasmaintained itself relatively isolated from the local populations that live in within the oilconcessions. The enclave territory that the oil industry constructed in EcuadorianAmazonia was of a qualitatively different order than all previous types of territoriality. Theuse of advanced geological knowledge and seismic technologies afforded this new socialactor access to parts of the Amazonian lands never before explored: the extreme depths ofits subsoil. Since petroleum and gas, both located in underground deposits, are theresources that the oil industry seeks, and in fact is its exclusive interest in coming to therainforest, the territorialities that they imposed upon this region were vertical as well ashorizontal. The subterranean territorialities that they introduced were based upon access toand control of the subsurface minerals that lie beneath a particular surface land area. Thistype of subterranean territoriality has taken on the legal form of oil concessions, nowstandardized into 200,000-hectare rectangular blocks. Since the Ecuadorian State claims allsubsurface rights in the country, it has granted itself the right to divvy up the land andparcel out concessions to the highest bidder.

The exploitation of vertical territories requires the existence of horizontal oneswhich inevitably impinge upon the horizontal territorialities of other peoples. Theinstallation of the petroleum industry in Ecuadorian Amazonia was centered in the landsoccupied by small groups of Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Tetete and Quichua peoples. Since theoil industry was occurring in the name of national development, hailed as being beneficialto all Ecuadorians (since supposedly all Ecuadorians wanted ‘development’), the nationalgovernment simply ignored the existence of indigenous peoples’ homelands and did notformally recognize the historically based territorial rights that they represented. Theoccupation of indigenous lands by the oil industry was not considered to be encroachment,but rather a type of manifest destiny, this time launched under the banner of developmentwhich granted the nation the ‘right’ to colonize its ‘own’ lands. The result was aparticularly acute form of superimposed cosmographies detrimental to the territorial claimsof the indigenous peoples who have historically occupied this area, and in fact pushed thesmall Tetete group into extinction.

Enclave territories 2: The Jari tree plantation and industrial complex

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While some large-scale projects are founded upon underground resources, othersare attracted to Amazonia by it vast expanses of low density, forested lands. Amazoniaoffers the distinct advantage of “appropriating large portions of space. This possibility isfacilitated by its territorial expanse, its low population density and its weak socialorganizations which are not capable of resisting this new appropriation” (Becker 1989: 11).Furthermore, the industrial nature of these enterprises was wholly new to the area andrepresented a radical break with all of the previous forms of tropical forest adaptation, bothin terms of the scale and impact of operations. With industrial extraction and production,major infrastructure works are built which facilitate the arrival of large populations. Part ofthese workers are directly recruited by the project and enter into the territorial realm of theenclave, while others who migrate on their own accord in search of work do not have directaccess to the enclave and are forced to create their own migrant territories. The installationof the Jari Project in the Jari region exemplifies these tendencies.

In 1967, U.S. billionaire Daniel Ludwig bought an enormous tract of land inBrazilian Amazonia where he would install a massive development project that wouldbecome one of the most polemical projects in the history of Amazonia. Ludwig bought outthe Portuguese firm that was operating in the Jari region, which in turn had bought out theBrazil nut estate of José Júlio de Andrade two decades earlier. Ludwig sought to transformthe jungle through the creation of modern enterprises using the most advanced technologiesof the time. The centerpiece of this economic endeavor was to be a large tree plantation thatwould furnish raw material for a wood pulp (cellulose) plant to be installed by the time thefirst round of planted trees were ready for harvesting. He also implemented an enormousirrigated rice plantation, established a large kaolin mine and processing plant, and installedan extensive cattle and water buffalo ranch (Pinto 1986).

All of these activities transformed Jari from a ‘development project’ into an‘industrial complex’ and created a multifaceted, territorial enclave. The Jari Project’sconnections with the world outside of Brazil were predicated upon two interrelated sets ofnetworks: sectorial networks tied to the paper (wood pulp and kaolin), timber, cattle, andrice industries; and the economic networks that formed Ludwig’s financial empire. Each ofLudwig’s Jari operations were structured according to the specifications and demands ofthe worldwide industries of which they were a small part, but it was their union as part ofthe unique Ludwig fortune that personalized the Jari Project and tied it most closely intothe world economy. The Jari Project reproduced the Ludwig structure of enterprises thatwere scattered throughout the globe.

Though Ludwig sold the Jari Project to Brazilian national industrial interests underheavy pressure from the military dictatorship in 1982, the territorial assumptions that theJari Project maintained over the years have varied very little between international andnational ownership. Both relied upon the capitalist principles of absolute control over theland which was only subject to change through the mechanisms of buying and selling onthe market. The Brazilian owners claimed legal ownership over the same contiguous,compact 1,632,121 hectares claimed by Ludwig in spite of the numerous questionable andcontested land titles of these properties.

None of the varied ‘bosses’ and ‘owners’ of the various Jari enterprises recognizedthe land rights of the caboclos. Their colocações where located in this region and theyclaimed control over them through the Brazilian law of possession which granted themrights to the land due to their continuous physical occupation of the land. These possession

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rights were a constant source of conflict which was never given its due by the nationalpress or by the government, both of whom were more concerned with the issues ofsovereignty and geopolitics.

Migrant territories 1: Rural colonization in the Aguarico region

The massive rural colonization of the Aguarico region by small scale farmers andthe concentrated urban growth of the Jari region are both directly related to the installationof the two large scale projects just described, and led to the establishment of what we shallcall “migrant territories” which represent still another territorial result of the developmentcosmographies that were implemented in Amazonia.

The principal means of advancing agricultural fronts into Amazonia was throughthe mechanism of colonization in which peasant families would settle these lands, cut downthe forest, and place the land in agricultural production. The ‘logic’ of colonization thatguided national leaders contrasted Amazonia, which contained large parcels of “emptylands” (i.e. not in agricultural production), with the intense land distribution pressuresexisting in other parts of the country. The mechanisms used to accomplish this variedbetween small-scale directed and semi-directed colonization programs and massive,unplanned colonization, with the latter supplying the greatest number of colonists in all ofthe Amazonian countries.

The policy of expanding the agricultural frontier was founded upon the practice ofgranting individual titles to the migrating farmers in what would represent a massivetransfer of public lands to private control. As such the expansion of the agricultural frontierwas part and parcel of a broader capitalist logic of private ownership of land and sought tobring new parcels of Amazonian land into the capitalist productive sphere. These policiesessentially precluded autochthonous Amazonian peoples as valid members of the nationalsociety, since they failed to recognize these peoples’ claims to the lands they hadhistorically occupied and explicitly encouraged the invasion of these lands in the name ofsome vague notion of territorial security.

In the Aguarico region, a road connecting the town of Lago Agrio, the center ofpetroleum development, to Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, was completed in 1971, givingthis region modern land access to the rest of the country for the first time in history and theoil industry opened up an extensive network of roads within the area in order to buildpipelines and gain access to the wells. This new land access was promptly taken advantageof by thousands of colonists who were eager to lay claim to tracts of land where they couldfarm and ranch and produced a first wave of colonization in this area that lasted throughoutthe 1970s. Roads are of fundamental importance to the colonist enterprise because theyprovide direct and easy access to the land and facilitate the marketing of crops produced onthe farm.

Land is the principal resource that the colonist seeks in his migration to the jungle.For the colonist, Amazonia does not represent a tropical jungle, nor a set of forestextractive products, nor a potential gold mine, but a place where land is available. And thisland exists for agriculture, since that is the main function that the colonist has used in thepast to make a living. Although subsistence crops are grown by the colonists, the goal of

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the farm is to produce crops to be sold on the market. Income from occasional work withthe oil companies provides much needed cash income, but this is at best an expedient; thegoal remains to gain cash income from the agricultural production of the farm.

Once these new colonists were settled on the land, they sought political andadministrative means to consolidate their territorial claims to the region. An implicitpolitical strategy employed by the colonists was to use their voting rights as citizens withina national body politic, rights carried with them from their place of migration, as a meansof pressuring the government to recognize their presence. A key element in this strategy isthe establishment of ever-smaller political-administrative divisions within the statestructure, which are then used to consolidate local power and push for increased stateservices and infrastructral works. In 1989 the province of Sucumbíos was created from thenorthern portion of the Napo province since the colonist and petroleum populations hadgrown sufficiently to justify the establishment of a new province. At a local level, thisstruggle was waged over the creation of new counties and parishes, efforts whichculminated in the tripling of the number of counties within the area encompassed by theSucumbíos province between 1982 and 1994. These victories further altered the territorialdynamic of the area while serving to integrate it administratively and political into theEcuadorian state.

In all of these efforts, the colonists do not see themselves as ‘invaders’ ofindigenous lands. From their agriculturally-based market perspective, this land isessentially unused and appears to exist in sufficient quantities that it can support Indiansand colonists alike. Since colonists do not practice or understand the extensive ecologicalbases of indigenous adaptation, these are seen as ‘inefficient’ and result in the‘exaggeration’ of the amount of land needed by a small indigenous community to supportthemselves. The colonists are reinforced in these beliefs by the government agencies whichencourage colonization and by the oil industry which seeks access to the hydrocarbonresources located under indigenous lands. The colonists are unable to see that the historicaloccupation of the land by indigenous peoples is based upon a completely different set ofecological and social principles, linked to a cosmographies radically different fromdevelopment ones of which they are a part, and hence the problem posed by superimposedcosmographies is not directly perceived.

Migrant territories 2: Improvisational urbanization in the Jari region

The industrialization of Amazonia was founded upon a set of state policies thatincluded installing large-scale development projects in rural areas, expanding the existingindustrial sectors of urban areas, creating free trade zones, and building hydroelectric damsto provide the electric power needed for industrial development. All of these effortsrequired the movement of large numbers of people to Amazonia where they would serve asa cheap labor force for these varied projects. In this variant of frontier expansion, jobsbecome the main resource that Amazonia has to offer. The creation of a stable workforcerequired the concentration of large numbers of people in one place which created the needto urbanize the jungle. As Becker (1989: 17) points out, “the project of the integration ofAmazonia was predicated upon urbanization as the logistical base of its settlement, justified

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by the necessity of offering attractive living conditions to the migrating population.” The emergence of the towns of Laranjal do Jari and Vitória do Jari, in the Jari

region are clearly a part of this larger process. The establishment of these two towns is anexpression of a development cosmography as it has been appropriated and implemented bythousands of poor migrants. The town of Laranjal do Jari began in 1968 with a fewscattered houses —built on stilts over the floodplain of the Jari River in typical caboclostyle— along the eastern side of the river in what was then the Federal Territory of Amapáand earned the name of Zona Franca (Free Zone) (Raiol 1992). In the span of just twenty-five years, the population of this town had soared to 30,000. This rapid growth had creatednumerous problems such as lack of basic health and hygiene infrastructure, a shortage ofschools, high crime rates and chronic diseases.

The installation of a wood pulp and a power plant by the Jari Project at the port ofMunguba in 1978, located approximately 20 kilometers downstream from Monte Douradoon the western (Pará) side of the Jari River, gave impetus to the growth of another riversidesettlement, called Vitória do Jari, also located on the eastern (Amapá) side of river justacross from Munguba. Vitória do Jari also experienced a rapid growth pattern, reaching10,000 people in its first two decades of existence, and suffered from a similar set ofproblems as Laranjal, its neighbor to the north.

These two towns have generated a unique territorial dynamic of their own as urbancenters with their own needs and interests, one that is increasingly divorced from and existsin opposition to the Jari Project. The growth of Laranjal do Jari, for instance, has beenspurred by many economic activities that are no longer directly tied to the Jari Project.These activities include new roles as a commercial center, a port, as a jumping off point forgold miners, and as a source of employment, most notably in the areas of construction andgovernment jobs. Economic activity revolving around the largely illicit timber industry alsoprovides jobs in the felling of trees, in sawmills and lumberyards, and in the construction ofhouses and boardwalks.

As in the case of the Aguarico region, the territorial strategy of these inhabitants isdirectly related to their demographic power and has focused upon the establishment of newpolitical-administrative units by the government. Through this strategy, the localinhabitants ostensibly gain: (1) greater representation within the government; (2) access tofinancial resources earmarked for each governmental administrative unit; and (3) greatercontrol over local affairs since the decision-making bodies are located within the region. InBrazil, this process is carried out at state, municipal, and district levels. Keyaccomplishments of these efforts were the granting of statehood to the Federal Territory ofAmapá in 1988 and the creation of the new municipalities of Laranjal do Jari and Vitóriado Jari in 1977 and 1994, respectively.

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ENVIRONMENTAL COSMOGRAPHIES

The accelerating destruction of the world’s tropical rainforests became one of thecentral issues of the worldwide environmental movement during the 1980s and wasaddressed from a variety of perspectives. The issue of tropical rainforests has specificgeographical coordinates, i.e. those countries within the tropics that still have rainforests.Of all of these forested lands, Amazonia represents the largest single block of rainforest inthe world, accounting for approximately 40% of the world total. Thus it is not surprisingthat within the rainforest issue, Amazonia became a privileged site of struggle and attentionand turned into an issue in and of itself which has ecological, social, economic andhistorical implications that go far beyond the narrow scope of concern over the destructionof the rainforest. Amazonia was appropriated into the international environmentalistdiscourse as a world biome, a perspective which posed deforestation, the activity that mostradically alters existing ecological relationships, as the most serious problem facing therainforest. As the rate of deforestation increased dramatically during the 1980s, this topicbecame the principal cause of alarm and the rallying cry of environmentalists to theexclusion of almost all others.

By the mid-1980s, an environmental front had coalesced in Amazonia and thediverse set of social actors who comprised it began to establish new regional frontiers (Onis1992: 173-248). New environmental programs were established in order to reverse thedeforestation trend and remake Amazonian policies in an ecologically-sound mold. Theenvironmental front introduced a series of new (and not so new) activities into Amazoniasuch as the implementation of agro-forestry projects, the restoration of deforested lands, thedemarcation of Indian lands, the harvesting and marketing of forest products, theapplication of selective logging techniques, biodiversity prospecting, ecotours, andenvironmental education seminars. By pursuing their own interests, which in one way oranother are related to environmentalism, the diverse social actors of the environmentalfront created a political space filled with new alliances formed around specific goals,created new contradictions, and produced the partial overlap of political interests amongstthem.

The unique appropriation of the environmental discourse by these varied socialactors based upon their specific interests has concrete territorial dimensions, thus givingsubstance to the notion of environmental cosmographies while at the same time requiringthat it be a broad-based one. Two types of environmental territorialities will be dealt withhere: preservationist territories and sustainable use territories. Environmentalcosmographies have been superimposed over development ones just as the latter have beensuperimposed over preceding cosmographies. There was a difference now, however, sincethe superimposition was coming so quickly on the heels of the previous one, acceleratingthe process of change and making it ever more complex.

The two preservationist territories to be analyzed here —the Cuyabeno WildlifeProduction Reserve in the Aguarico region and the Jari Ecological Station in the Jariregion— are contemporary examples of these complexities. This will be followed by ananalysis of the sustainable use territories of the enlarged Cuyabeno Wildlife ProductionReserve in the Aguarico region and the Cajari Extractive Reserve and the MaracáExtractive Settlement Projects in the Jari region.

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Preservationist territories 1: Cuyabeno Wildlife Production Reserve (1979-1991)

The establishment of governmentally sanctioned protected areas —national parks,wildlife sanctuaries, wilderness areas, forest reserves, etc.— is a defining practice of thewilderness preservation current of the environmental movement and represents the clearestexpression of its territorial dimension. This movement began in the United States and GreatBritain during the latter half of the nineteenth century (McCormick 1992). By mid-twentieth century it had gained a significant presence in the policies of several SouthAmerican nations. In Amazonia, the installation of protected areas started slowly butquickly became an essential part of the territorial structure of most Amazonian nations.Peru was the first nation to establish protected areas in Amazonia, with the creation of thePacaya Reserve in 1940 and the Samiria Reserve in 1954, both in the Marañón River basin.The first national park in Amazonia was the Araguaia National Park, established by theBrazilian government in 1959 in what is now the state of Tocantins. During the 1970s and1980s, 86% (28% and 58% respectively) of all existing protected areas in Amazonia werecreated (Rojas and Castaño 1991: 65-75). This twenty-year period witnessed the formalinstallation of this current of environmentalism in Amazonia and is the temporal referentfor understanding the way that these ‘preservationist territories’ competed with and weresuperimposed upon both enclave territories and migrant territories of developmentcosmographies which experienced peak installation during the 1960s and 1970s.

The establishment of the Cuyabeno Wildlife Production Reserve in 1979 by theEcuadorian national government was clearly part of this new trend and placed it wellwithin the bounds of the emerging environmental cosmographies being applied toAmazonia at this time. This Reserve encompassed the Cuyabeno River watershed locatedin the heart of the Aguarico region. The Cuyabeno River, the largest tributary of theAguarico River, is a blackwater hydraulic system whose headwaters lie within theAmazonian lowlands where it drains most of the Amazonian lowlands located between theSan Miguel and the Aguarico Rivers. The centerpiece of this area is the Cuyabeno Lakesdistrict comprised of fourteen interconnected lakes and numerous seasonally inundatedlands, making “the area a rare combination of rainforest and wetlands” (Nations and Coello1989: 141). One of the key reasons behind the establishment of the Cuyabeno Reserve wasthe protection of the enormous diversity of faunal life found within this unique ecosystem.

This new cosmography was superimposed upon others that were already beenestablished here, most notably indigenous and development ones, creating an increasinglycomplex and conflictive territorial dynamic. The establishment of the Cuyabeno Reservedirectly affected two indigenous communities, Puerto Bolívar (Siona) and Playas deCuyabeno (Quichua), located within its limits. This created initial conflicts between thesecommunities and the governmental protected areas department, conflicts which wouldeventually be resolved through negotiations, as we shall see shortly.

Meanwhile, the western portion of the Reserve became the central battlegroundbetween two competing cosmographies: a developmentalist front advancing from the westcomprised of the oil industry and agricultural colonists and an environmentalist one isresisting this invasion from the east. As the oil industry expanded into the area of theReserve, it built new roads in order to gain access to newly drilled wells. As soon as theseroads were built, colonists from other parts of the country began using them to stake outand settle upon 50-hectare plots. The numerous wells and roads in the Dureno and

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Pacayacu area, towns located just outside the Reserve, made this a prime site forcolonization. By the time the Reserve was established, as many as eight colonization lineshad been established in this area, many of them within the Reserve’s borders. Meanwhile,the towns of Tarapoa and Bellavista were well within the borders of the Reserve and all ofthe colonists in this area had plots within its limits. All of these developmentalist socialactors sought to remove this portion of land from the Reserve and, in this way, put an endto the conflict with the environmentalists.

The social actors tied to environmental cosmographies were adamantly opposed tothis solution. They argued that the Reserve was created to include an entire hydrographicbasin and that this basin needed to be protected in its entirety. A social-legal argument wasalso made that claims that giving in to developmentalist forces would set a precedent thatwould encourage future invasions of this and other protected areas. While theenvironmentalist social actors did not possess either the political clout or the financial andhuman resources to turn the situation around, they were partially successful in slowing thedevelopmentalist invasions and placing the environmental preservation of the area on theagenda.

Preservationist territories 2: The Jari Ecological Station

The establishment of protected areas introduces new social actors into the territorialstruggles of an area and includes government bureaucrats, scientists from diversedisciplines, and environmentalists. This set of social actors exercises territorial control overprotected areas even though, in many cases, they are both physically and culturallyremoved from the local populations that live in or near the geographical area to beprotected. In addition to visits to the area, they have access to protected areas through theuse of technologies such as satellite imagery, scientific studies, and photographs whichpermit them to ‘know’ an area in an indirect manner. Many Amazonian protected areaswere drawn on a map and published in the federal register (which is what formally broughtthem into existence) by bureaucrats who had little, if any, first-hand knowledge of the area.But since they have considerable territorial power over this area, a power granted to themthrough the legal mechanism of the national protected areas system, they must beconsidered to be Amazonian social actors in their own right. This represents a majorchange in land management techniques since it turns the issue of territorial control overgeographical areas into a bureaucratic and legal endeavor.

The Jari Ecological Station, created along the northern edge of the Jari Project bypresidential decree in 1982, fits into this mold. The 207,307 hectares set aside by thisecological station for preservation and scientific research added a new and quite differentlayer of territoriality to this region. As first established it was located on the land betweenthe Jari and Paru Rivers, south of the Carecuru River and north of the Jari Project in theAlmerim municipality of the state of Pará. This area included the magnificent Paredão, amassive rock canyon that is part of the Plateau of Maracanaquara whose rocky terrainhouses several large, natural clearings interspersed with numerous small niches rich inplant and animal life and many caves, and is surrounded by dense tropical forest. Thebiological, geological, and hydraulic wealth of the region provoked the researchers who

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wrote the report to claim that “the natural ecosystems of this region have not yet sufferedfrom human interference” (Castro and Elias 1981: 3). While this statement attests to therelatively unaltered state of these ecosystems, it neglects to mention that indigenouspeoples have long used this area and that just a few kilometers north of the Paredão a smallindigenous community of Aparai continued to live along the Jari River (CEDI 1983: 174-81).

The most serious crisis that the Jari Ecological Station faced in its early years wasthe invasion of the area by garimpeiros (wildcat gold miners). Though the middle andupper Jari River Basin had been the site of sporadic gold mining since the 1950s, with theastronomical rise in gold prices on the London market in 1979-80, “gold mines multipliedin all latitudes, provoking a gold rush without precedents” in the history of Amazonia(Salomão 1984: 62). The center of gold mining along the Jari River was located at themouth of the Carecuru River, the northern border of the Jari Ecological Station, and by1983 approximately 4000 gold miners had established themselves in the makeshiftencampment there. By the mid-1980s, an estimated 5500 garimpeiros were working in themiddle Jari River Basin during the peak seasons (CEDI 1983: 180-1). The reaction ofSEMA, the government secretariat responsible for the Station, to this untenable situationwas swift (by governmental bureaucratic standards). In keeping with its policy of avoidingsocial conflicts, and given the near impossibility of removing thousands of armed minersfrom the area, the boundaries of the Jari Ecological Station were modified in 1984, lessthan two years after their initial establishment. This new presidential decree removed fromthe Jari Station a large chunk of land south of the Carecuru River, the heart of the goldmining operations, and tacked on an even larger portion of land on the other side of the JariRiver (in the state of Amapá), giving it a new size of 227,126 hectares.

The Jari Ecological Station suffered other threats in 1989 from the Jari Projectwhich was in the process of switching all its new plantings to eucalyptus and was clearingnative forest lands to expand this operation. Part of this expansion was to the north,activities which brought it ever closer to the borders of the Jari Ecological Station.Confronted with this expansion, IBAMA, the government environmental agency nowresponsible for the Station, decided to take forceful action and embargoed three Jari Projecttrucks loaded with freshly cut timber for lacking the proper authorization for cutting nativeforest in this area. The Jari Project did not challenge this embargo, choosing instead to haltits expansion to the north, and the Jari Ecological Station gained a 18-kilometer buffer zoneof native rainforest along its southern border.

Sustainable use territories 1: Cuyabeno Wildlife Production Reserve (from 1991)

As the sustainable development discourse gained currency within the worldenvironmental movement, the forms of resource use by autochthonous peoples began to bereevaluated and the contradiction between protected areas and local peoples began tolessen, as new forms of co-management of territories began to be sought. New proposalsand practices were established whereby autochthonous populations would collaborate withgovernment conservation officials in the control and use of protected areas whilecontinuing to live within them. The use of the area, however, would now be done according

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to formally established use patterns whose specific content was to be negotiated betweenthe two parties involved. These developments led to the creation a new type of territorialitytied to environmental cosmographical principles.

The transformation of the Cuyabeno Wildlife Production Reserve from apreservationist territory to a sustainable use one exemplifies this process. On July 3, 1991,the Ecuadorian Ministry of Agriculture and Ranching expanded the Cuyabeno Reserve tothe southeast to include the entire lower Aguarico River Basin from the mouth of theCuyabeno River to the mouth of the Aguarico at the Napo River. This decree enlarged theReserve from 254,760 to 655,781 hectares, nearly tripling its size.

By this time, the Ecuadorian tourist industry had grown in size and economicimportance due to the growth in worldwide interest in Amazonia and was a major forcebehind the push to expand the Reserve and protect this rich rainforest. Just one week beforethe decree enlarging the Reserve was promulgated, Transturi Inc., the Amazonianoperational division of Metropolitan Touring, moved its luxury liner “Flotel Orellana” fromits previous base of operations in Limoncocha on the Napo River to the lower AguaricoRiver within the new boundaries of the Cuyabeno Reserve. It established two touristencampments, equipped with cabins, boardwalks, and motor boats, at the Zancudocochaand Imuya Lakes, and began selling package tours ranging from high luxury to highadventure. Thus when the Reserve was enlarged, it already had a major tourist operationfunctioning within it in exclusive form. In addition to Transturi, numerous smaller touristcompanies, which had sprouted up the late 1980s in response to increased demand, beganto conduct small-scale tours in the Reserve, and by 1991 thirteen different companies hadbeen formally authorized to operate there tendency (PROFORS 1993: Anexo 3). Thispresence turned the tourism industry, together with the tourists who participated in thetours, into key social actors of the Cuyabeno Reserve.

The enlargement of the Reserve also expanded the role of its indigenousinhabitants. The new Reserve boundaries encompassed two other indigenous communities:the Cofán community of Zábalo and the Quichua community of Zancudo. With theincorporation of Cofanes, the Reserve now had to deal with segments of four differentindigenous ethnic groups (Siona, Quichua, Shuar, and Cofán). In spite of the fact that thedecree which expanded the Reserve stated that it should “promote the participation of thelocal population in the conservation of the area and in the benefit gained from thesustainable management of its renewable natural resources” (Registro Oficial 1991: 2),neither of these two communities were consulted prior to the Reserve’s expansion.

A new management plan was written for the enlarged Reserve by aninterdisciplinary team of scientists. The central territorial innovation contained in theCuyabeno Management Plan was its call for formal, written agreements (convenios) to beestablished between INEFAN, the governmental protected areas department, and theindigenous communities located within the Reserve which would outline the terms of co-management of specific areas. The co-managed territories proposed by this plan fusedcollective use principles (e.g. indigenous homelands) with State trust ownership ones (e.g.protected areas) whereby the State would maintain formal ownership of the land but wouldcede exclusive use rights to indigenous communities according to a set of writtenconditions negotiated and formally agreed upon by both parties. Each indigenouscommunity would be designated a territory which they would use and manage in jointcollaboration with the reserve rangers and other government conservation officials. While

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this represented a territorial modality that did not exist in Ecuadorian law, by movingforward with these agreements, a de facto territorial entity —called sustainable useterritories here— was established with its legal status still pending.

In all four indigenous communities entered into these agreements: Zábalo (Cofán);Puerto Bolívar (Siona); and Playas de Cuyabeno and Zancudo (Quichua). These fourcommunities considered these co-management agreements as a formal recognition of theirterritories which was then used as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with the touristcompanies. Since the four communities now had formal management duties over theirrespective territories, they claimed that they should also control and participate in thetourism that occurred with them. This created a another type of de facto territory —atourist-indigenous one— in which tourist companies and indigenous communities enteredinto agreements stipulating the use of particular routes, the building of tourist infrastructure,and the hiring of personnel and revealed yet another variant of the notion of sustainable useterritories. Though these agreements could not prohibit other tourist companies from usingthe area, since this control was formally in the hands of INEFAN, they could direct thetourist flow in ways that would directly benefit them. Through this joint collaboration, theIndians gained employment income and a ready market for their handicraft goods while thetourist companies gained cheap labor and the chance to offer encounters with ‘exotic,Indian tribes’ as part of their tourist package. Individual tourist companies preferred tonegotiate directly with communities rather than with the ethnic confederations whichrepresented these communities on a regional and national level since they had a great dealmore leverage in the negotiations and would have to give far fewer concessions.

Sustainable use territories 2: Cajari and Maracá Extractive Reserves/Settlements

In Brazilian Amazonia, the rubber tappers, along with other extractivistpopulations, proved to be the key social force behind the movement for the creation ofsustainable use territories. In their struggle to protect the forest from invasions by outsideeconomic interests, primarily loggers and ranchers, they greatly strengthened their internalorganization such that by 1985 they had formed the National Rubber Tappers Council,which gave them national visibility and political clout which they had never had before(Allegretti 1991). By this time they had entered into a tactical political alliance withenvironmentalists who were also interested in the protection of the rainforest.

The notion of ‘extractive reserves’ emerged from this interchange and contained thedual goals of ecosystem conservation and human use. This use was to be based upon thelow-impact, long-term extraction or sale of renewable resources founded upon existingautochthonous use systems. The techniques used in these systems were to be improvedupon through the incorporation of modern scientific knowledge and new technologies wasalso proposed. Agro-forestry systems based upon multiple forms of low-impact productionare but one example of how local knowledge systems of autochthonous peoples are beingcombined with state-of-the-art western scientific knowledge to create new, sustainablemeans of profitably exploiting Amazonian ecosystems.

In 1987, the Ministry of Agrarian Reform and Development established theterritorial modality of Extractive Settlement Projects within its administrative domain. The

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modality of Extractive Reserves was established by Brazilian federal law in 1989 as a newtype of governmental protected area, became a formal part of Brazilian environmentalpolicy, and was placed under the responsibility of the IBAMA, which had been createdearlier that year (IEA 1993: 123). A 1990 decree provided specific guidelines for theimplementation of Extractive Reserves that defined them as “territorial spaces designatedfor the self-sustaining exploitation and conservation of renewable natural resources by anextractivist population” (Decree no. 98.897).

Meanwhile, the National Rubber Tappers Council was not limited to supportingrubber tappers, but also Brazil nut extractivists who lived in several parts of the Amazon.The Cajari and Maracá River Basins, located in the southern tip of the state of Amapábecame the site of two new extractivist territories. Both rivers have their headwaters in theIratapuru highlands of central Amapá, an area rich in natural Brazil nut groves whichformed the ecological basis for extensive Brazil nut extractivism during the first half of thetwentieth century.

Three Extractive Settlement Projects —Maracá I, II, and III— were created in1988 as three contiguous projects of the lower, middle, and upper Maracá River Basinrespectively, covering a total area of 363,500 hectares. In 1991, the local cabocloextractivists who lived in the Basin organized themselves into the Association of Agro-extractivist Workers of the Maracá Valley. The creation of the Cajari Extractive Reserve in1990 set aside 481,550 hectares of the Cajari River basin in an area situated to the southeastof and contiguous with the Maracá Extractive Settlement Projects. In 1991 these localextractivists formed the Association of Workers of the Extractive Reserve of the CajariRiver Valley. Together the Maracá Extractive Settlement Projects and the Cajari ExtractiveReserve encompassed 845,050 hectares and formally and legally reaffirmed the extractivistvocation of southern Amapá. From a territorial perspective, the most important element ofthis large block of extractive land was the creation of a new type of social and politicalorganization —the local extractivist associations— which were of a qualitatively differentorder than any other organizations that had existed before among the caboclos.

The most pressing challenge to these two extractivist associations arose from themultiple economic forces that sought access to these 845,050 hectares in order to exploit itsmany natural resources for private economic gain. The invasion of these areas by waterbuffalo ranchers and gold miners were two of the most persistent of these challenges.Another threat came from the commercial fishing boats that enter these two rivers where,through the use of predatory fishing techniques, they take large amounts of fish which arethen processed, frozen, packaged, and shipped out to regional and national markets, leavingthe local population without ready access to their key source of protein. The predatorycutting of assai palm trees for palm hearts is another activity controlled by externalcommercial interests which devastates natural palm tree groves and provides littleeconomic benefit for the local population. The presence of illegal logging and clandestinesawmills is still another type of invasion that these two associations must confront. Finally,the invasion of lands within these areas by small-scale farmers who squat on lands next tothe recently constructed state road represents a major threat to the territorial and ecologicalintegrity of these areas (Little and Filocreão 1994: 101-113).

In spite of these many threats, in the span of a decade (1987-97), extractivistpopulations had made enormous gains in consolidating their political power andestablishing territorial claims to the lands they occupied. Both the Maracá Extractive

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Settlement Projects and the Cajari Extractive Reserve are legally established sustainableuse territories in an incipient state of becoming economically profitable, socially viable,and ecologically sustainable.

CONTEMPORARY TERRITORIAL DISPUTES IN AGUARICO AND JARI

Within each of the two regions examined above, a diffuse and diverse set ofalliances and conflicts was established by the multiple social actors with territorial claimswithin the area. Though each group seeks to gain political advantage to promote itsterritorial claims, the specific strategy and tactics employed may vary greatly. As such, thealliances and conflicts that develop can change according to the specific circumstances ofthe dispute and the historical moment.

In the Aguarico region, one can note the emergence of a two opposing, loosely-grouped, political alliances: one between indigenous communities, environmentalists andthe ecotourism industry and the other between the petroleum industry and agriculturalcolonists. The unifying element of the first alliance is their common desire to maintain theforest in its standing state, free from environmental pollution. This unifying factor wasemployed in their struggle to stop the expansion of new oil development into the lowerAguarico River Basin during the early years of the 1990s, which included, among otherevents, the two-day occupation of a newly drilled oil well by the Zábalo Cofán community.

Yet this common factor has not always been sufficient to maintain the politicalunity of this tenuous alliance since the varied social groups also have a host of divergentinterests which sometimes clash. The relations between the Ecuadorian protected areasdepartment and the indigenous communities of the Cuyabeno area, for instance, has beenmarked by tension, and only time will tell if their joint collaboration in the co-managedterritories of the Cuyabeno Reserve will continue to function smoothly. Meanwhile,tensions exist between the ecotourist industry and the indigenous communities over theproper distribution of profits generated by tourism to their tourist-indigenous territories.Finally, the presence of four distinct indigenous peoples in the Aguarico region is fraughtwith problems due to the long history of intertribal tensions between these groups.

On the other side of the political fence, the oil industry and the colonists haveentered into a tacit political alliance due to their common interest in opening up therainforest to the forces of modernization and development. A symbiotic relationship existsbetween the two groups, whereby the colonists benefit from the opening up of oil roads andthe oil company gains a cheap labor force has helped maintain this alliance. Yet tensionexists here too. The increasing amount of air, water and soil contamination caused by theoil industry has alienated many colonists who suffer directly from these negativeenvironmental impacts. They also do not like the low salaries the oil companies pay them,though they are forced to accept them for lack of alternatives.

In the Jari region, political forces have become split among three separate groups oralliances: (1) the Jari Project; (2) the urban migrants/residents of Laranjal and Vitória doJari; (3) and an alliance between the local caboclo extractivists and environmentalists. Thistriangular situation has provided for a complicated set of conflicts in which two groups may

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ally themselves against the third in one set of struggles, while allying themselves with theirformer antagonists against the former allies in another.

In 1991, during the debates over the construction of a new road that would cutthrough the territories of the Jari Project, the Cajari Extractive Reserve, and the MaracáExtractive Settlement Projects, a tacit alliance was formed by the Jari Project, extractivistsand the environmentalists against inhabitants of the urban centers of the area. The firstgroup opposed the road’s construction because of the high potential for the invasion of theirterritories by migrants and the environmental damage that would result from it. The secondgroup sought quicker and more direct access to Macapá, the capital of Amapá, and saw theroad as promoting the economic development of the wider region.

In a different conflict over territorial claims in Amapá, the extractivists of the CajariExtractive Reserve were pitted directly against the Jari Project in a dispute over legalcontrol of a large overlapping tract of land. In this battle, which is still in the Braziliancourts, the urban migrants tended to side with the Jari Project since they felt that access tothe land, which was in their interests, would be easier under Jari Project control than if itwere formally sectioned off as a federal protected area.

CONCLUSIONS

The quantity, magnitude and duration of territorial disputes in Amazonia makes thisbiome a highly revealing site for the study of human territoriality. In this study, thephenomena of perennial frontiers, with its incessant opening, closing and reopening offrontiers, finds ample empirical evidence in the history of the Aguarico and Jari regions.The continual superimposition of cosmographies and territorialities with the arrival of newsocial groups, each with their own economic and geographical interests and differentialquotas of power, has led to a complex, still unresolved territorial dynamic in these tworegions.

The comparative perspective employed here has allowed for the detection of keydiachronic similarities concerning the emergence of pan-Amazonian cosmographies duringthe same historical epochs. This can be seen through the parallels exist between theAguarico and Jari regions, two areas separated by over four thousand kilometers of tropicalrainforest. During the Colonial epoch, mission and mercantile cosmographies weresuperimposed on indigenous ones, generating distinctive cases of ethnogenesis. During theRepublican (Ecuador) and Imperial (Brazil) epoch of the nineteenth century, thesuperimposition of national and new mercantile (rubber) cosmographies in these regionsadded further complexity to their territorial dynamics. In the latter half of the twentiethcentury, first development and then environmental cosmographies were superimposed onthese regions, provoking a new round of frontier disputes that are still active today. Theinstallation of these many cosmographies in these two regions also produced structuralsimilarities with regards to the types of territories as can be seen in the autochthonoushomelands and enclave, migrant, preservationist, and sustainable use territories of eachregion.

A broad ethnographic approach has shown how social agents have been involved inthe actual establishment of these territories and have made the two regional histories

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unique. The parallel processes of ethnogenesis, for example, produced strikingly differentresults. In the Aguarico region, an indigenous Quichua-speaking ethnic group emerged outof the cauldron of ethnocide and came to dominate the area up until the arrival ofdevelopment cosmographies. In the Jari region, a caboclo Portuguese-speaking ethnicgroup emerged from the long process of ethnocide but was generally subordinated byBrazilian imperial and republican governments.

The way social agency played itself out a national level was also distinct in the tworegions. Ecuador lost large amounts of Amazonian territory to neighboring Peru andColombia, while Brazil experiences territorial expansions with regards to all of itsAmazonian neighbors. The different ways that alliances and conflicts in the two regionsdeveloped in contemporary territorial disputes are also worth noting. A two-way splitoccurred in the Aguarico region between developmentalist social actors (oil industry andrural migrants) on one side, and the environmentalist and indigenous actors on the other,alliances maintained only tenuously due to the significant internal divisions within eachone. In the Jari region, a three-way split occurred between the Jari Project, the urbanmigrants of Laranjal and Vitória do Jari, and a tactical alliance between extractivists andenvironmentalists.

The way these territorial disputes are played out does not only depend on thepolitical relations that exist amongst political actors within the region under discussion, butalso the relationships that each of these social groups maintains with social actors andpolitical forces located outside the region. In order to analyze these relationships, the factorof social scale must be introduced. My use of scale here borrows conceptual elements fromthe mathematical notion of fractals.

Fractal analysis was first developed in the work of mathematician BenoitMandelbrot (1977), who created a novel type of geometry based on non-linear means ofexamining irregular shapes that sought to move beyond the centuries-old Euclideangeometry of regular shapes. The term fractal was derived the from Latin fractua (irregular)but was also invoked by Mandelbrot to suggest ‘fractured,’ ‘fragmented,’ and ‘fractional’(Briggs 1992: 22). The introduction of fractals into social theory is a hazardous exercisesince one runs the risk of inappropriately transposing a mathematical concept to explainsocial realities that operate according to social, and not mathematical, criteria. At the sametime, the refusal to employ a powerful concept (both in its functions as metaphor andtheoretical construct) that could be useful in the analysis of new types of time-spaceinterrelations simply because it comes from a different realm of knowledge would befoolish.

Fractal scaling in ethnography is concerned with delimiting and describing scales ofview and then tracing the links between levels while simultaneously highlighting the waysthat irregularities, random influences, unintended consequences have intervened betweenthese levels. The technologies of time-space compression allow social actors tied toterritories that exist at different levels to be in immediate contact with each other (Harvey1989). Within each cosmography, social actors can construct human territories thatsimultaneously exist at many different levels of social scale. The degree of fractalness ofterritories (i.e. the number of levels at which they exist) is dependent upon the use oftechnologies that allow for their contact across levels (i.e. an increasing non-locality).

This fractal nature of the human territories installed in the two regions studied hereintroduces a different power dynamic in the use of claims to resolve territorial disputes. The

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social actors of fractal territories at smaller levels of social scale use the social, political,economic, and discursive links they maintain with territories and social actors at largerlevels as a power base that transcends their particular level. The magnitude of this power isdependent upon the amount of power wielded by social actors at larger levels and theaccess (or influence) that local actors have to those sources of power. Fractal power, then,emanates from the conjunctures of local autonomy and global interdependence. Theexercise of fractal power relations not only requires that different levels of social scale beidentified by social actors but also that they be strategically employed in daily strugglesthrough the effective use of the fractal potential of interdependence.

The sources of power of environmental social actors, for example, stem from thegrowing social and discursive force of the worldwide environmental movement that haspresented a compelling claim for the conservation of the Amazonian biome. Without thesefractal power connections, the environmental cosmography would not have been able tochallenge the development cosmography with the force that it did in both the regionsstudied here.

Most territories produced by the development cosmography are also of this mold,most notably the large-scale development endeavors such as the Petroecuador oil companyand the Jari Project, both of which were created as fractal parts of larger industrial,technological, and financial entities. These fractal ties (and the accumulation of power theyimply) catapulted them into a position of hegemony within their respective regions almostimmediately upon their installation there. The rural and migrant territories are also fractal,though to a lesser degree than large-scale projects, since they rarely have direct globalconnections. Nonetheless, their migrant territories are founded in demographic movementswithin a nation-state giving them power connections as citizens within municipal,state/provincial, and national administrative units.

Territories tied to autochthonous cosmographies are the most local of all, andhence, the least fractal. However, as indigenous and caboclo groups become incorporatedinto larger political structures such as the nation-state and develop contacts with socialactors tied to worldwide organizations they gain powerful links that strengthen theirhistorical claims to territory. The formation of confederations and political organizationsspanning national boundaries has placed these peoples into the international political arenawhere they have gained further support from their ties to organizations of international civilsociety, particularly environmental and human rights groups.

In summary, the dual perspective of superimposed cosmographies and fractalpower offers insights into the broader issue of human territoriality. The identification of thediffering cosmographies represents a crucial first step in delineating the human dimensionof territories. Once this is done, further steps include a description of the specific socialgroups that maintain and defend these territories, an analysis of their fractal ties across theglobe, determining the degree of hegemony that each territorial type has achieved, and theclassification of these territories into different typologies.

One can also ask the historical question of whether all currently establishedterritories were the result of disputes with other groups. The constant movement of peoplesover past millennium seems to indicate that all regions of the world, at one point or anotherin their history, experienced frontier processes and hence, the territorial disputes thatemerge from them. Thus, even those territories that appear to have an inalterable spatialitythat is eternally fixed in time, probably, if one digs deep enough into their history, were

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installed through conflict, incorporation, interpenetration, and/or accommodation withpreviously existing territories in some type of superimposition. This seems to suggest thatterritoriality, far from being a closed subject in human history, will remain open to newchanges, such that the neatly colored maps that hang on our walls will need to change aswell.

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